Benjamin Babine, Abuja
The Minister of State for Health, Dr Olorunimbe Mamora, has inspected and commissioned the newly built ultra-modern Accident and Emergency Unit of the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Ebutte Metta.
The Minister commended the FMC project which was done in conjunction with PharmAccess Foundation, saying that he is very pleased and satisfied with what the team has been able to achieve in terms of improving the service delivery and infrastructure of the medical center.
‘I’ve gone round to see every department that is involved in the clinical care of patients. I’ve seen the diagnostic equipment and I’ve seen the enthusiasm in the staff. I must say that this is very impressive,’ the Minister said.
He noted that the team has been raised the bar in terms of quality and standard, despite the COVID-19 pandemic which has the tendency to make routine services suffer because of the tension that has been focused on the pandemic.
‘There is a lot of commendation for the team, from the chairman of the board to the medical director, the staff, doctors, nurses, laboratory scientists, pharmacists,’ he said.
Speaking about PharmAccess Foundation’s SAFECARE initiative which helped in the project, he said: ‘It is also good to learn of your Processes and Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) in partnership with SAFECARE. I hope to be back here sometime soon when this relationship will lead to international accreditation of this Federal Government Institution.’
The commissioning also coincided with the launch of a COVID-19 monitoring app developed by PharmAccess in partnership with Luscii Technologies based in Amsterdam.
The remote-screening and monitoring mobile application, which is available on Google’s play store and Apple app store was developed in a bid to support Lagos State’s response in containing the virus.
The application, ‘Luscii’, is a mobile app that screens users for COVID-19 symptoms and allows daily monitoring of symptoms such as body temperature, presence of cough, headaches, and others based on NCDC guidelines.
Speaking about the App, the Country Director of PharmAccess, Njide Ndili, said: ‘The system monitors and assesses your risks and determines your level of risk. At some point, depending on the measurement that you have, your inputs trigger an alert in the background where you have trained medical responders who see the measurements that have been put in the system.’
She said the system flags the risk patients and they (the medical responders) contact them, counsel them, and in some instances, have them evacuated or tested and if they are positive, treated. Since the service started over the last three months, she said it has recorded over 12,000 downloads in Lagos, out of which are 3, 000 active users engaging on the system.
‘Through the self-monitoring application, we have evacuated and tested 18 patients and out of which, eight have been positive, and they were treated free of charge. This is a free service,’ Ndili said.